Call it Google Exodus. Call it Passover in the modern world. What would the Exodus story have looked like had it taken place today? Or what if Moses had social networking? It would have looked something like this:

USC’s Institute for Creative Technologies has one-upped Google, and turned Google’s “Gmail Motion” April Fool’s joke into a reality. Using a Microsoft Kinect, they took all of Google’s mock body motions and turned them into real commands to control your Gmail. Check it out.

Facebook has taken the next step in its quest for world domination of people’s online lives. Facebook email (codenamed “Project Titan”) was introduced today:

While the new product will incorporate @facebook.com e-mail addresses, Zuckerberg said it will be more than just Gmail competition. It will offer three key features other e-mail services lack: seamless messaging across a variety of platforms, including SMS and texting; conversation history across those platforms; and a “social in-box,” meaning the company can filter the in-box just to include messages from friends.

Of course, the problem with email is that it’s old. Who under 30 years of age uses email anymore outside of their work-mandated email? Today, messaging is done instantaneously with text messaging, chat, and video conferencing. Email is what my generation (I’m 37) uses when communicating with those who aren’t on Facebook or don’t carry wireless devices.

Google made an earlier attempt at rethinking email with its Google Wave, on which it has stopped development. Now Facebook is giving it a try. In adding email, Facebook is essentially hedging a bet against Google, just in case email lingers for another decade. If Facebook can add email to its social networking offerings before Google can add social networking to its assortment of apps (remember Google Buzz?), then Facebook may be able to wrest away the throngs of users that are fleeing Microsoft exchange for Gmail. Add to this the impact that Apple is making on Microsoft with its Macs and the iPhone, and the transformation of modern media is complete. The biggest loser in all of this is Microsoft. (We’re not counting AOL’s “Project Phoenix” – Elvis left the building years ago.) Google docs will continue to do away with MS Office; iPhone, iTunes, and the Mac computer line will continue to erode away at the Microsoft operating systems (methinks they’re on Windows 7 now) and media players; and Facebook will continue to devour all social interaction.

We are left with a world that will use Google Android and Apple iPhones to access all communications, including the internet. (Sure, there are other phones and service providers, but how will they compete with Google Voice long term? Cable companies should be wary as well, as both Google TV and Apple TV are here.) Apple will continue to offer its Macs as a computing solution, while Google is adopting the cloud solution with its Chrome OS. Google will continue to be the search engine of choice, and Google Docs, Earth (which should merge with Maps), and Calendar, will continue to provide the free, cloud-based apps to businesses and individuals alike, thereby continuing to vex Microsoft’s dying business model. Google Voice, an assortment of mobile voice tools superior to those of most wireless companies, will continue to erode at the very old school models of phone communications and the less antiquated, but hat-handed wireless companies by offering a free alternative to voice mail and dirt cheap long distance service. Meanwhile, Facebook (and FB apps on Droid and iPhones) will become the place for all social interactions, especially for the younger generations.

As far as higher education is concerned, the first company sync Facebook profiles with university class rosters, harness Google Docs, YouTube, and Wikipedia into a Moodle-style content management system wins. The first university to employ Facebook’s networking abilities, Google’s apps, and Wikipedia’s knowledge base with their library holdings will not only lead the way in online education for years to come, but will produce a revenue stream by exporting such a system to other universities.

If Facebook and Google have taught us anything, it is that cloud-based computing, social networking, and crowd-powered collaborative research are not only the future, they are the here and now. First one to get there wins.

Google is introducing a beta version of “Priority Inbox” for Gmail (because “Priority Mail” is already taken). Like most things Google, it is a simple, but welcomed enhancement to Google’s free email solution.

Google already has an effective spam filter. “Priority Inbox” works by using a new, teachable algorithm that determines which of your remaining emails (after the spam filter) are most important based upon keywords in the emails you read and to which you have responded. You can also train Gmail to promote or demote certain emails based upon content or sender, like you can with music on Pandora. Essentially, Google has created an algorithm for email content similar to the one it uses for web pages, which promotes certain results over others, except that the results are private to the email recipient. Over time, the more important emails are partitioned into three groups in your inbox:

Important and unread

Starred (Items you’ve read and designated as important)

Everything else

The new tool is convenient because the less important emails are still visible in your inbox, but those emails you are truly waiting for in your cluttered inbox are elevated to the top.

You can activate the Priority Inbox from your existing Gmail account with a simple click. Try it today.

laura italiano of the ny post is reporting that plea bargain negotiations between the ny district attorney’s office and a lawyer for raphael golb have broken off without agreement. melissa grace has the story at the new york daily news:

That means the case against Raphael Golb, a real-estate lawyer turned amateur religious scholar, is headed to trial in September.

the case is scheduled for trial beginning september 13, 2010.

Raphael Golb, son of University of Chicago Oriental Institute historian Dr. Norman Golb, is accused of identity theft, forgery, criminal impersonation, unauthorized use of a computer, and aggravated harassment by the state of New York. Plea bargain negotiations broke down today. The trial is scheduled for September 13, 2010. Photo by Steven Hirsch.

according to sources:

They offered the son 80 hours of community service if he pleaded guilty to two misdemeanors – and the judge said three years probation would have to be a condition.

Golb turned it down because probation would bar him from contacting his victims – including posting on blogs where the scrolls’ origins are debated.

golb is the son of university of chicago oriental institute historian dr. norman golb. golb is accused of multiple felony and misdemeanor counts of identity theft, forgery, criminal impersonation, unauthorized use of a computer, and aggravated harassment by the state of new york as a result of golb’s involvement with an extensive campaign to smear the perceived rivals of his father. a detailed history and evolution of golb’s campaign against dead sea scrolls scholars, grad students, museums, and universities is chronicled at the who is charles gadda website.

sigh. it had a lot of great features and tremendous potential, but google wave is dead. i knew they had stopped advertising, developing, and supporting it, but it could have been finished. was it an internal dispute? or are they just going to take the best of the features and migrate them to gmail and google docs. wave’s beauty was that it combined google docs and gmail, but it looks like google is either taking another strategic route and leaving the two separate, or they have something in the pipeline that will trump them all.